


Dead Leaves and Fleeting Skies

by certain_as_the_sun



Series: How to Train Your God of Mischief [5]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angry Loki, Character Death, Do Not Hurt Loki's Friends, Gen, Hiccup Needs A Hug, How to Train Your Dragon 2 Spoilers, Loki is Not Amused, Loki is Toothless, Post-How to Train Your Dragon 2, The Avengers (2012) Never Happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-01 06:34:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6504676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/certain_as_the_sun/pseuds/certain_as_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Drago learns it's a Bad Idea to hurt Loki's friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Leaves and Fleeting Skies

**Author's Note:**

> I've... no idea what this is. This was meant to be a story about Loki playing tricks on various unsuspecting Berkians and Hiccup's efforts to stop him, but I made the mistake of watching HTTYD2 when I was half-way through writing it and wondering how its events would fit into this AU. Next thing I knew, I was writing about Loki getting revenge on Drago for making him attack Hiccup. I'm not happy with the finished version, but it more or less wrote itself. These things happen.
> 
> I wasn't sure what rating to give this, since it's more violent than the previous stories.

Never act impetuously. That was one of the first lessons Loki learned. When he was a child and Thor or one of the Warriors Three had damaged or destroyed one of his precious books, he had lashed out at them in anger. His magic was untrained and too weak to do any lasting harm (Hogun sprouting feathers for a week afterwards didn't count). They overwhelmed him and gave him a good hiding. Cuts and bruises (and the satisfaction of seeing one of his tormentors looking ridiculous) weren't the only thing Loki took out of that incident. He learned that acting without thinking never ended well. Acting impetuously clouded your judgement and made you more likely to make mistakes.

And so, after Drago was gone, Berk was slowly returning to normal, and Hiccup was struggling to adjust to losing his father and becoming chief in the space of three days, Loki waited. He waited for Drago to slip into a sense of false security and for his own anger to subside. As he waited, he planned.

Loki was not noted for a forgiving nature. Quite the opposite, in fact. Any Asgardian who angered him was likely to be found gibbering in terror and insisting that various impossible things had happened to them. He rarely used physical violence in his vengeance, but there were always exceptions. The drunk palace guard who attempted to force himself on him when he was a teenager had ended up in several pieces buried in far-flung corners of the gardens, for instance. And that was just what happened to the people who harmed or angered Loki himself. Until coming to Midgard, he had never had friends and so had been unaware of the lengths he would go to if they were injured. Now he had Hiccup, and he found there was absolutely nothing he would not do to get revenge on those who hurt his friend.

Asgard and Jotunheim could attest to the fact that the God of Mischief had never been the most stable person in the Nine Realms. Since his... possession, for want of a better word, by the alpha, he was in a state of mind that rivalled the madness he descended into after discovering the truth about his origins. The orders Drago's alpha had given him continued to echo in his head, and he would never admit it but there were times he was afraid he'd give into it and kill Hiccup. The - mercifully unclear and distorted - memory of Stoick's death played through his mind each night. All together, Loki was furious, angry, frightened, and wanted nothing more than to kill Drago. Slowly. Painfully. Creatively.

Since his wander across the realm in the chaotic early years of his time on Midgard, Loki hadn't ventured far from Berk without Hiccup. He found himself remarkably apprehensive about leaving the boy. Hiccup might be twenty, but no matter how you looked at it, Loki was well over a thousand. His human friend was a mere child compared to him, and the god felt the same worry about leaving him alone that an older relative might feel about leaving a small, helpless baby alone for any length of time.

It was late evening two weeks after returning to Berk. Loki was lying on the wolfskin rug before the fire in his Æsir form, searching through his vague, cloudy memories of the aforementioned wander across the realm and poring over a "borrowed" map for a likely place where Drago might have gone to ground, when Hiccup wandered in. He wore the haggard, careworn expression he'd worn ever since Stoick's death (and, oh, how Drago would _suffer_ for that), but added to it was an extra layer of misery. He halted when he saw the god and tried to school his face to a more cheerful expression.

"Do you honestly think I'm fooled?" Loki asked rhetorically, sitting up.

Hiccup smiled wanly. "No, I suppose you wouldn't be."

Loki waited silently. Experience had taught him that Hiccup would tell him anything if he was quiet for long enough. Sure enough, the boy sat down on the rug next to him and started talking.

"Snotlout and Eret had a fight over-" He coughed and looked extremely embarrassed on their behalf. "-which one of them Ruffnut likes best."

Loki snorted. Now there was a shocking piece of news. Those two had been at loggerheads ever since Ruffnut developed her absurd liking for Eret. Frankly, he wished they would murder each other and get it over with it. "I realise neither of them are geniuses, but they should know by now that their constant fights do nothing to endear them to the rest of us. Have they killed each other yet?"

"No."

"What a pity."

Hiccup glared at him and continued his tale. "I tried to make them stop. I couldn't, and Snotlout told me I'd never be my father so I shouldn't even try."

Loki wondered if he should arrange a nasty accident for Snotlout before or after he dealt with Drago. "I hope you caused him grievous bodily harm."

"I didn't, but I think Astrid did."

The girl went up in Loki's estimation. Perhaps he'd let that pathetic worm off this time; an angry Astrid was punishment enough for anyone.

Hiccup changed the subject. "One of the maps has gone missing. Dare I ask what you want with it?"

Loki fought not to scowl. He hadn't realised that map would be missed so soon. "I'm planning a holiday."

The boy's eyebrows shot up. "A holiday? You've been here five years and you've never mentioned going on a holiday before. Why now? Can't you wait another month? Just until things settle down?"

By "just until things settle down", he meant "until I stop flinching every time I see something of my father's". That was something else Drago would suffer for when Loki found him. But when he looked at Hiccup and saw the misery on his face, the god almost agreed to stay.

He didn't.

"There is a very important matter that I must attend to," he said simply.

Hiccup nodded listlessly. He'd fallen into a sort of depression over the last weeks that very little could snap him out of. Loki could only think of four people who could do it: himself, Astrid, Valka, and Gobber. The rest of the time Hiccup did his duties as well as he could but without any interest in them. He was still trying to cope with being made chief so soon after his father's death, and now one of the few people who helped him cope was leaving. Again, Loki seriously considered abandoning his plan for a later date.

Again, he didn't. With each day he lingered in Berk, Drago got further away.

He stood up and rested one hand on the boy's shoulder. "I will be back as soon as I can."

 

* * *

 

 

Loki didn't use his dragon form; he couldn't heal its injuries by himself and would be unable to fly far without Hiccup. Bringing Hiccup along would be a recipe for disaster, since not only would Berk be without a chief but Hiccup would object to his plan. Instead he took the form of a raven, and flew to the various places he'd thought likely hideouts for Drago. The human wasn't anywhere near the island that had been Valka's home for twenty years. He was nowhere to be found further north. The god encountered a few of his ships as he flew south and derived a great deal of enjoyment from sinking them. But there was still no sign of Drago.

And then, unexpectedly, he found him.

Drago had taken refuge in a deserted village on a large island. Well, it was deserted _now_. It had obviously not been deserted before the would-be invader had arrived. Half-frozen bodies, gnawed at by wolves and birds, lay in a pile a good distance from the village. Loki eyed them with mounting rage. Not because of any moral outrage at their deaths, oh no; Midgard might have changed him, but it hadn't changed him so much that he particularly cared for the fates of humans he had never met. He was furious because that was the fate Drago had planned for Berk, the fate he had attempted to use Loki himself to bring about. The thought of Hiccup lying dead in the snow, killed by Loki's fire, food for whatever wild animal came across him, made the God of Mischief wish - not for the first time - that he had been able to find a snake similar to the one he would supposedly be chained beneath.

In the absence of acid-dripping snakes, however, Loki had turned his attention to other punishments described in the myths told of him. Sadly, the only one he could use on Drago was stitching the human's mouth shut. Once that was done, everything he did to him would be the god's own invention, and Loki could be very inventive.

He flew over the village several times in his bird form, then waited out of sight of the village until nightfall. Back in his Æsir form, he slipped silently around the back of the buildings and into Drago's house. Loki cast a strong sleeping spell on the human, locked the door, and considered his next move. He wanted the human to _suffer_ , to feel something of the pain he had caused, but he didn't want to kill him right away. Leave him in agony for as long as possible, and then kill him. That was what he would do.

Loki conjured up a needle and thread. Then he cast a restraining spell, a spell to render a person incapable of speech, and finally he lifted the sleeping spell.

He smiled grimly at Drago's look of panic and growing horror and rage.

"I don't expect you recognise me, so let me introduce myself. I am Loki of Asgard. For some years now I have resided on Midgard in the form of a dragon. A Night Fury dragon, to be precise." Realisation dawned on the human's face. "In this form I live in a village named Berk, with a human who has shown me great kindness. You and your alpha forced me to kill the father of this human, and I have come to exact revenge."

He held up the needle and thread.

 

* * *

 

Humans were irritatingly fragile. After stitching Drago's mouth shut, all it took were a few of Loki's most realistic illusions - of being torn apart by the dragons he tried to control, of having his legs and remaining arm cut off, of being burned on a funeral pyre while still alive and other, similar delightful images - and the human was so completely and utterly terrified that doing anything more to it would count as cruelty to a dumb animal. Loki resumed his dragon form and killed Drago with a burst of fire. He thought it was a fitting death, considering what it had made him do to Stoick.

 

* * *

 

Hiccup woke up abruptly when someone snatched his quilt away. He rolled his eyes.

 _Well, I_ did _tell him not to throw water at me..._

"Welcome back," he said, still half-asleep. "Enjoy your holiday?"

"Enjoy is not, perhaps, the right word, but it was certainly eventful," Loki said, replacing the quilt and sitting down next to him. "I will tell you about it in the morning. By the way, you no longer need to worry about Drago Bludvist."

Five years ago Hiccup would have reacted to this pronouncement with horror. Now, after prolonged exposure to the God of Mischief, he simply sighed and said, "Don't tell me now. I'd rather not have nightmares."

As he drifted back to sleep, he was vaguely aware of Loki murmuring something. It sounded like, "I will not let anyone hurt you again."

That should not have been as comforting as it was.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Élan" by Nightwish.


End file.
